Fondots

joined 2 years ago
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Looking for a quality weighted blanket in c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That's a big part of the reason we went with it. Even if it didn't destroy the washing machine, you just know eventually it's gonna break open somehow and then you're gonna be stuck cleaning up those beads.

And the weight distribution on some of them just isn't very good, more like having a pile of beanbags on you than an extra heavy blanket

Looking for a quality weighted blanket in c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

We have a bearaby blanket. It's a little different from most weighted blankets in that it doesn't have a bunch of little beads or whatever sewn into it for weight, its just knitted from a ton of fabric. Because it is knitted it's very breathable which is nice because I'm a pretty hot sleeper.

It's also probably a little more washable than a lot of other blankets because of that, but you may need to make a trip to the Laundromat to use the big washer.

If you're not a fan of the knit, I imagine you could probably stick it in a duvet cover.

Pizza Hut's AI system caused 'cascading' problems and $100M in damages, franchisee alleges in new suit in c/technology@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 53 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I was a delivery guy for a local pizzeria once upon a time (and that place still has their own drivers, and even their own delivery vehicles, which is practically unheard of)

And I'm not gonna lie, door dash and such was great for a while because it let me get food delivered from restaurants that otherwise didn't do delivery.

But I've stopped using them, for a few reasons including their shitty business practices

But the straw that broke the camels back in each case that made me delete was them fucking up my order.

And that happens, I'm not particularly mad at the store or the driver, I've been there

But the way that these delivery apps handle it is, to me, unacceptable.

When I contacted them, their response was to just issue me a refund.

And to me, what should have happened, is I should have immediately had a replacement sent, expedited as much as possible, at no extra cost.

That's what we always did when I was a delivery guy, and often with a gift certificate as an apology.

And sure, a refund on top of that would be nice, but really the root issue is that I don't have the food I ordered. If I order it again, I'm going to the back of the delivery queue, and if I happened to order it when I was low on money I may not even be able to reorder it that day because that refund often takes a couple days to clear.

TIL that eating dirt was common in the U.S. South until the 80s. People ate a handful a day, often seasoned with vinegar and salt. in c/til@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I once heard Spam described as "everything but the oink"

And so when I describe scrapple, I usually start with that, and then describe scrapple as being "mostly oink"

I really don't understand how people have 200+ guests at their weddings. in c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

My wife and I did a quick courthouse thing because I got a new job and she needed health insurance. The plan was to do an actual wedding of some kind a year or two later but COVID and a bunch of other stuff happened so it's been on the back burner. I think we're looking at a 10 year thing now, which is nice because it's given us a lot of time to think about guest lists and such.

We have a pretty decent amount of friends we want to invite, I think we're in the ballpark of around 30

Some of those are gonna have +1s, so that gets us up to around 50 or 60

Then we have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. and some of them have +1s, depending on the size and relationship you have with your family, that can make things balloon really quickly.

And if you're able to budget for it, it can be advantageous to invite as many people as you can, money and other wedding gifts can add up pretty substantially. That's not a major factor in our guest list, but for a young couple, maybe looking to buy a house and have kids or whatever, that can be huge.

TIL that eating dirt was common in the U.S. South until the 80s. People ate a handful a day, often seasoned with vinegar and salt. in c/til@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

I'm not too sure about what the version of scrapple you received was, it sounds like some kind of bastardized hash, but scrapple is a common breakfast thing in the Mid-Atlantic/Delaware valley area.

The version I'm familiar with as a Philadelphian, admittedly doesn't sound a whole lot better on paper, but the actual eating experience sounds a lot more pleasant. It's basically pork scraps and organ meats simmered down until they're falling apart and mixed with cornmeal and buckwheat then formed into a mushy loaf, which is then sliced and fried.

You're not going to identify any particular piece of pork or anything else in it, it's a pretty uniform grey mush, and the only real texture comes from frying it to give the outside a nice crispiness. Nothing tough or chewy about it, you barely need to chew it, the texture is probably more like polenta (which it kind of is) than anything else you might be familiar with. It also usually doesn't contain any apple or potatoes.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, but if you find yourself near Philly don't let whatever you were served in the south turn you off from trying actual scrapple.

Parts of Ohio have goetta, which I think is supposed to be pretty similar to scrapple but with oatmeal instead of corn meal.

I've also heard of "livermush" and "liver pudding" being served in some parts of the south, which honestly sound like dead-ringers for scrapple to me, though I have some friends from the south who insist that they're different from and better than scrapple.

I feel like whatever you were served was some southerner trying to recreate something they heard described one time but never actually tried themselves, or just slapping the name on something without knowing that there's another dish out there with the same name.

Have you ever camped out or queued up for the launch of a game, console, or other media? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Got up bright and early and had my mom drive me to target for the game cube launch

I've done a lot of midnight movie releases, and a couple Harry Potter books releases

It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, but I worked late at the time anyway, so when Skyrim came out I just swung by game stop after I got off work to get that at midnight

Republicans vote to dilute gas as prices rise above $4.50 in c/politics@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I think you're confusing e85 with 85 octane gas

E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gas (and e15 is the other way around)

Octane rating is a measure of how much you can compress a fuel before it ignites by itself. Higher octane gas is more resistant to that. (And e85 actually has a pretty high octane rating, usually somewhere north of 100. Regular gas often contains up to 10% ethanol, in part because it boosts the octane rating)

To expand on that a bit, if you compress gas enough, at a certain point it just catches fire on its own. This is actually a big part of how diesel engines work. Diesel is actually pretty hard to ignite, in some cases you can even put out small fires by pouring diesel on it (don't try this at home) so they rely on getting high enough compression in order to work.

Gasoline is a lot more flammable though, you don't really need to compress it at all for it to burn. Sure, ideally you probably want a certain compression ratio because something something stoichiometry but gas is more forgiving in that regard. As long as your air-fuel mixture is about right, it's gonna burn when your spark plug goes off.

In fact, gas is maybe a little too forgiving, if your octane rating is too low and your engine compression is too high (mostly a problem with higher-performance engines) that gas can just kind of go off too early before the spark plug goes off, which causes "engine knock" which will cause damage.

But the other way around, high octane in a lower compression engine, basically does nothing spectacular. It still goes boom when the spark plug goes off and not until then.

When traffic comes to a standstill, German drivers instantly shift left and right to create a Rettungsgasse, an emergency corridor so ambulances and firefighters can fly through at full speed in c/videos@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago

Anecdotally, 40-ish years ago, one of my mom's relatives came to visit from Poland. There are a whole lot of wild stories about that visit and from when my mom visited Poland around that same time that highlighted a lot of differences between life in the US and from behind the iron curtain at the time.

While he was here, her relative was amazed to see cars pulling off to the side to let emergency vehicles pass, that was apparently something totally new to him.

What gaming console you own/owned disappointed you the most and why ? in c/games@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The real shame is that the coffee table isn't really visible because it's pretty cool itself, it's a hatch from a ship (I believe a WWII Liberty ship)

Bit of family history with it too. My dad originally had it, but my mom hated it, so eventually it went to live with my grandfather. He died, and it ended up back in our basement. My sister and I both really liked it, and we had a bit of an agreement that whoever moved out first got the table, and I won.

EDIT: Also for anyone else who likes my setup, the entertainment center and shelves in the wall are IKEA Fjallbo, no pretty affordable. The shelf of the far right is just an IKEA Kallax.
And I have the TV synced up to Phillips hue lights behind it and in the ceiling

What gaming console you own/owned disappointed you the most and why ? in c/games@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not totally sure where the bottles came from, we don't really drink chianti, and they've just kind of been hanging around on a shelf somewhere, but they ultimately ended up on this chandelier

What can you say about Cormac McCarthy's book - The Road? in c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I started reading it just before COVID hit. My reading habits are very sporadic, sometimes I'll devour a book in a day, other times I'll read a chapter or two once a week and it takes me months to finish a book. This happened to be one of the later cases

It was really good, but holy shit that was not the book to be reading when people were getting into fights over toilet paper.

So I did not finish it, I intend to eventually, but it had to go on the back burner.

Everything about it just kind of oozed bleak hopelessness. I've caught myself starting to say I enjoyed it, but "enjoyed" is really the wrong word, there is no joy to be found in that book, perhaps you appreciate it, maybe you feel it, maybe you just read it and acknowledge that it's a good book.

150
No shoes are truly BIFL if you wear them regularly, but these come close (slrpnk.net)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Fondots@lemmy.world to c/buyitforlife@slrpnk.net
56 comments fedilink
 

It may look like a beat-up old pair of hiking boots, but in fact it's a pair of beat-up old hiking boots with new soles, lining, heel-counters, shanks, hardware, laces and one hell of a cleaning and reconditioning job.

Around 4 years ago I bought this pair of Danner Lights. They were worn fairly close to daily, and have some hard miles on them hiking and backpacking.

Sent them in to Danner for their recrafting service. 4-6 weeks and a couple days for shipping later I just got them back.

They're just the tiniest bit snug because of the new lining, but otherwise these are unmistakably my boots that have broken in to fit my feet, but the soles still have treads on them.

Also, Danner customer service was great to deal with. When I shipped my boots out to them, I got the notification that they had been delivered, but after a day or two I hadn't gotten the email from Danner to confirm they received it. I wasn't exactly worried, I figured it would probably take them a couple days to open the box and get my boots checked in, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to give them a call anyway.

After a reasonable number of rings, my call was answered by an actual human.

And one with no heavy accent, who didn't mumble into the phone, and had no attitude problem, and most astoundingly, actually worked for Danner at their office.

But so I asked if there was any way he could confirm that my boots had been delivered to the right place. He took my tracking info, looked it up, and was able to tell me that yes, they had them, because he knew the guy who signed for them.

And then he gave me a direct number to the recrafting department in case I needed to follow up with them any further (I didn't feel any need for that, but after recently going through hell trying to get in touch with anyone at the local delivery hub for a company that was supposed to deliver some new appliances for me with no luck to figure out what the hell was going on with repeated delivery delays, I really appreciated that)

It's kind of sad that I'm so used to automated menus, outsourced call centers, and customer service reps who clearly want to be doing anything else but helping me (not that I blame them, I don't want to work either) that that's all it takes to make a customer service experience feel great.

If I have any complaints at all about my experience, it's that the white stitching around the soles was replaced with brown. I thought the white looked pretty sharp, but these are hiking boots they're just going to get dirty anyway.

But anyway, I'm really happy with my experience, and I'm looking forward to hopefully another 4+ years with these boots.

15
Resin printing in the cold (lemmy.world)
 

Over the summer I picked up a secondhand Saturn 2 to play around with. Pretty quickly got it dialed in and was getting good prints out of it, mostly miniatures for tabletop games

With the holidays and such I had to take a couple months off from printing, and in that time it got cold. My printer is set up in my basement and right now the temperature down there is usually hanging around maybe 55 degrees fahrenheit (around 12-13C)

And I just cannot get prints to adhere to the plate. The handful that have stuck have come out pretty nice, so my overall settings can't be too far off, but we're talking about maybe 2 or 3 useable prints from a whole batch that I used to come out without an issue.

I'm using grey sunlu ABS-like resin, which is what I was using before and got pretty decent results

I'm using a wham bam magnetic build plate, which hasn't caused me any issues before (well at least not since I figured out that my printer came with 2 plates and that one was already on the machine,) I've cleaned the plate thoroughly and scuffed it up a bit with a brass wire brush. I've also re-leveled the printer using the same process I have since I first got it.

My FEP is also fairly fresh, I replaced it a few months back and only did about 2 or 3 prints before I took my little break from printing

It's possible my settings are a little different, I had to make some changes to my computer and didn't write down my old settings, but I'm pretty sure I had pretty much settled on the recommended settings I'm using now.

So pretty much the only thing I can figure is that it's a temperature issue.

I know some people preheat their resin in some hot water before printing, but personally I tend to leave resin in the vat and top it off as needed, I usually have something lined up to print next so it doesn't sit there very long, and I don't want to deal with the potential mess of pouring it back into the bottle if I don't have to.

I'm also aware of things like the thermalvatband or other ways to heat your printer/resin. That's certainly an option but I'd rather not spend money on another gadget if I can avoid it.

And like I said, the couple of prints that have turned out have actually been pretty good, my only issue is them just not wanting to adhere to the bed.

I'm gonna try cranking the burn-in times way up and lowering the lift speed way down and see where that gets me. If that doesn't work out though, does anyone have any other ideas on things I should try out?

17
Some of my usb ports not working in Mint (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Fondots@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
15 comments fedilink
 

Trying to breathe some extra life into my computer now that we're past the windows 10 EoL and I'm trying to install Mint

So far everything seems to be working fine except that some of my USB ports don't seem to be working.

They work in Windows, they work in the BIOS but once I'm up and running in with some of them just stop.

My motherboard is a gigabyte ga-990fxa-u3 (Rev 4.0) running the latest bios version

It has some USB 3.0 ports, and some 2.0, I'm not home right now to double check but I believe it's the 2. ports that aren't working.

I played around with Linux a little bit well over a decade ago but I'm essentially a total Linux noob

Anyone got any thoughts about what's going on with these ports or how to fix it?

EDIT: I got it working, after a bit of fiddling with every just about every setting in the BIOS here's what worked for me, reading your comments, and a lot of googling, I found this solution courtesy of a guy named David A. Jayne in the reviews of the Amazon page for the motherboard

OK, so here are the step-by-step instructions if you need them:

*** Step 1: Updating the BIOS settings ***

  • Reboot your computer, and press the "Delete" key (not to be confused with backspace) when the Gigabyte logo shows on your monitor to enter the BIOS settings. This can flash by pretty quickly, so sometimes it's easier to just repeatedly press delete while the computer restarts until the BIOS settings page shows (see attached screenshot).
  • Use the right arrow key to move over to the "Peripherals" tab.
  • Use the down arrow key to highlight "IOMMU Controller" near the bottom. Press enter, and a box will pop up allowing you to select "Enabled" or "Disabled". Use the up or down arrow keys to highlight "Enabled" and press enter. Your screen should now look exactly like the screenshot I have provided, the "IOMMU Controller" option showing that it is enabled.
  • Press the F10 key to save and exit.

Your computer will now reboot. If you have not yet been able to install Linux (and you probably haven't, if you have a USB mouse and keyboard) do so now. Don't plug your mouse or keyboard into any blue USB ports, as these are USB 3.0 ports and will not yet work. Once Linux has installed (or if it was already installed) boot your computer into Linux and proceed to Step 2.

*** Step 2: Editing /etc/default/grub ***

  • Once you see your Linux desktop, open a command prompt from the start menu. This is usually prominently featured on the start menu, looking like a little black monitor screen. It may be under "Accessories" and will probably be labeled "Terminal".
  • At the command prompt, enter the following exactly: sudo nano /etc/default/grub
  • You will be prompted to enter your password. Please do so. A simple-to-use text editor (nano) will open, and you should see a fair amount of text inside. If the file is empty, press ctrl-x to exit and Google search for instructions for your particular distro.
  • There is probably already a line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="", and you will just need to add "iommu=soft" between the quotes. Use the arrow keys to position the cursor between the quotes and add the appropriate text until the line looks exactly like the following: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=soft"

If there is no similar line already there, you may add it anywhere in the file. If there is a pound sign (#) at the beginning of the line, it will need to be deleted.

  • Once the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line has been edited, press ctrl-o to save it, and then ctrl-x to exit nano.
  • You need to enter one more command to finalize the new configuration, but it varies by distribution.

If you are on a Debian-based distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo update-grub

If you are on a Red Hat based distribution (RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Some information will print in the terminal window. If it says there were errors, go back to the beginning of Step 2 and try to figure out what you did wrong.

*** Step 3: Reboot your computer ***

  • There should be a prominent option on your start menu to shutdown or reboot your computer. You should usually use this, however, if you want to be fancy. you can enter "sudo shutdown -r now" in the terminal window to reboot.

Once you are rebooted, Linux should now be able to access the USB 3.0 ports and will boot much faster as well.

I did find that after that the 3.0 ports still didn't work, but thanks to @your_paranoid_neighbour@lemmy.dbzer0.com I still had one more thing to try and instead of "iommu=soft", I tried "iommu=pt" and that did the trick.

Thank you all for your help in figuring this out!

And if anyone wants to explain what any of that all means, I'd love to hear it, because I have no clue.

160
Turnip O'Lanterns (More in the Comment) (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Fondots@lemmy.world to c/pics@lemmy.world
10 comments fedilink
 

Few years back I decided to go back to the original concept and do turnips for my Jack O'Lanterns, and what can I say, I love the little guys.

They also fit on my windowsill a lot better back when I was in a small apartment without a proper front step/porch to put them.

14
Does my friend's response rub anyone else the wrong way? (lemmy.world)
 

This is gonna be a bit of a weird one, try to keep an open mind.

I went to a nudist resort with a couple friends a few times last year, it was a good time, we're hoping to go back a few times this year once the weather warms up again.

It's not a sexual thing, it's just nice to hang out without pants, no laundry to do when you get home, etc. There are some swingers who frequent it, but they're very respectful about it, they'll ask if you're "in the lifestyle" but if you're not they don't pressure you and let it drop. None of my friends involved in this story are swingers.

I've been kind of floating the idea to a few other friends I thought might be interested. It's a mixed bag, some are open to it, others aren't, not really surprising there, my own wife isn't interested, and I get that it's not everyone's thing.

Two of the people I floated the idea to are a married couple. We'll call them Will and Janet (not their real names.) Will wasn't interested, but Janet was open to it.

The resort posted their event schedule for this year recently, so I've been talking with the friends I went with last year to figure out when we want to go. We narrowed it down to a couple events we're interested in, and I've been letting my other friends who were interested know so we can figure out our plans.

Janet messages me back after I tell her what weekends we're planning on. Said she asked Will and that he wasn't comfortable with her going so she's going to pass.

And that just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Every relationship has a different dynamic of course, but personally I have a hard time imagining telling my wife that "I'm not comfortable" with her doing something she wants to do unless it is something outright dangerous.

Little extra context, we're all in our 30s, we're all mutual friends, it wouldn't be particularly unusual for any of us to go hang out with anyone else in this group. I've hung out with with just Janet before, we have spare keys to each other's houses, and I'm pretty sure my mom regards them as basically extras of her own children, in short we're all close and trust each other.

The other friends I went with last year are similarly close, a couple, we'll call them Erin and Steve. Will's actually known Erin longer than I have, and probably worth mentioning, went skinny dipping with her and some other friends once back in their teens or early 20s. They never dated or anything like that, she's just kind of "one of the guys" the dudes there were gonna jump into a frozen creek naked so she joined them. And Steve is a very chill dude.

Will is also not a controlling guy. This is the first time I've ever heard anything like that from him (albeit second-hand through Janet) very much a live and let live kind of dude. He's maybe a little prudish and old fashioned in his own tastes, but accepting that his tastes aren't for everyone.

I'm not really planning on pushing the issue, for all I know Janet got cold feet and is using him as an excuse, and unless I see any other sign of him getting weird, I'm just gonna chalk it up to their relationship dynamic being different from my own. But I just kind of wanted to see if that rubs anyone else the wrong way.

0
Sunflower making herself comfortable at her grandparents' house (lemmy.world)
 

Sunny is, as far as we know, a purebred Malinois, she's almost 4 years old, and is a strong contender for being the Laziest Malinois in the world (which still means she has more energy than any other dog I've ever known)

Some Malinois like to catch frisbees, run up walls, chase bad guys, parachute into hostile territory, etc. Sunny just like to wait for you to get up so she can steal your chair.

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